The four months Marshall L. Fisher has worked as the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety have been busy. 

Within days, Alex Bridges Deaton, accused in the deaths of two women among other crimes, allegedly shot Heather Robinson, of Quitman, only miles away from Fisher’s neighborhood.

Fisher’s department has also assisted in other recent tragedies across the state including: a quadruple homicide in Toomsuba; the death of 6-year-old Kingston Frazier; and a shooting spree that left eight dead, including a deputy, in Brookhaven.

With Fisher’s 40-plus years in law enforcement and experience with tragedies, he said the teamwork and communication between law enforcement and agencies such as Crimestoppers could be crucial in these cases.

“We (in law enforcement) live and die on the tips we get,” Fisher said to the East Mississippi Crimestoppers board on Thursday in Meridian. “In my experience, people coming together are unstoppable. Nothing significant in law enforcement is done by one person.”

Fisher credited Crimestoppers who, in the previous year, assisted with more than 300 cases and more than 1,250 arrests. In the Deaton case, Fisher said tips rushed in. 

Fisher served in the United States Navy before becoming a police officer. He worked his way through the ranks to join the Drug Enforcement Agency as an agent and, eventually, agent-in-charge of Mississippi. He retired “for a weekend” before he was called back to direct the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics for nine years beginning in 2005. In 2014, following the bribery scandal surrounding former commissioner Chris Epps, he served as the Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner.

Now the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, Fisher will oversee 13 agencies, including Mississippi Highway Patrol, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Narcotics, Mississippi Homeland Security, the Crime Lab and the Medical Examiner’s Office. 

Fisher discussed various obstacles the department faced: funding shortages that meant each Medical Examiner handled more than two times as many autopsies as recommended, only 475 troopers filling 650 statewide slots and the 211 recorded opioid deaths in Mississippi last year.

“Ninety-one die each day of overdoses. That’s like two jumbo jets going down once a week,” Fisher, the former director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, said. “We only hear about the (overdose deaths of the) famous ones and that story is being told 91 times a day.”

Jumping off of the opioid crisis, Fisher said that 14,479 inmates incarcerated by the Mississippi Department of Corrections were self-reported drug and alcohol abusers and that 3,250 had a mental health diagnosis.

“The Department of Corrections is a de facto mental institution,” Fisher, a former Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, said. 

Without public support, Fisher said, the department couldn’t achieve its goals.

“None of us could do our job if we didn’t have the support of the public,” Fisher said. 

Fisher recognized Sam Hudnall, a local businessman, who Pam Vance, the executive director of East Mississippi Crimestoppers, said brought the service to the state. 

“He knew law enforcement couldn’t do it by themselves,” Vance said. “He went door to door to solicit donations… It all starts back with one man.”

For Fisher, working with departments across the state comes back to one key component: communication.

“The biggest thing is communication, constant communication,” Fisher said.

In the case of the quadruple homicide in Toomsuba, where one man allegedly killed three women and one child, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations and Crime Lab both assisted local investigators.

“We have to make sure we are available to law enforcement agencies (across the state) and share our resources. It’s important to be there when they need us,” Fisher said.